The Commissioned Officers Association (COA) is planning a national public health conference to be held at the Wyndham Franklin Plaza, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The PHS Commissioned Officers Foundation (COF) will be sponsoring a one-day "conference within a conference" for the eleven different categories of the commissioned corps. The goal of the overall conference is to provide a venue for health professionals to discuss issues affecting international, national, tribal, state, and local public health officials and to share ideas, models, research, and approaches to addressing critical public health challenges. Representatives will convene to discuss in plenary and workshop sessions over four days critical public health topics. COF is providing an opportunity for a day of profession-specific topics for physicians, nurses, pharmacist, dentists, environmental health officers, scientists, engineers, and more. No comparable forum that exists for bringing together government public health providers from these various backgrounds to discuss cross-cutting problems and issues. In the face of increasingly complex public health challenges this conference is critical to maintaining the nation's public health system. The COA serves the members of the Commissioned Corps, which consists of approximately 5900 health care professionals comprised of physicians, nurses, scientists, dentists, engineers, sanitarians, pharmacists, veterinarians, dieticians, therapists, and health services officers who serve in all 50 states and more than 550 locations worldwide. The Corps provides officers to serve in the eight agencies of the Public Health Service, the U.S. Coast Guard medical staff, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the EPA, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and other international and national agencies.